Do passive devices sound more natural than active ones?
This is both true and untrue. In the perfect world, a guitar pickup should be connected directly to the amplifier with no pedals in between. But when a pedal like the Loopbone is inserted, this device needs to perform various functions such as dividing the signal to various signal paths we call effects loops. If we did not buffer the circuit, the guitar pickup would have to drive more than one effect loop at a time and this would cause the power going to each effect loop to be cut in half. Turn your guitar down when driving a distorted signal and you will immediately notice less sustain and less overdrive. This necessitates the use of buffers in the signal path. We developed a very clean Class-A circuit and introduced Drag Control to counter any effect that the circuit may have on the guitar. The results is a cleaner, more natural tone with all of the subtleties and dynamics that folks have come to expect when they purchase a Radial product.
